Paul Brunton - The Maharshi and His Message #13

[Guest guest]

.......

 

It is too stuffy to sleep in that long, sparsely ventilated hall,

so I choose the courtyard. A tall, grey-bearded disciple brings

me a lantern and advises me to keep it burning throughout the

night. There is a possibility of unwelcome visitors, such as snakes

and even cheetahs, but they are likely to keep clear of a light.

The earth is baked hard and I possess no mattress, with the

result that I do not fall asleep for some hours. But no matter —

I have enough to think over, for I feel that in the Maharshi I

have met the most mysterious personality whom life has yet

brought within the orbit of my experience.

 

The Sage seems to carry something of great moment to me,

yet I cannot easily determine its precise nature. It is intangible,

imponderable, perhaps spiritual. Each time I think of him

tonight, each time I remember that vivid dream, a peculiar

sensation pierces me and causes my heart to throb with vague,

but lofty expectations.

 

During the ensuing days I endeavour to get into closer contact

with the Maharshi, but fail. There are three reasons for this failure.

The first arises naturally out of his own reserved nature, his

obvious dislike of argument and discussion, his stolid indifference

 

 

to one’s beliefs and opinions. It becomes perfectly obvious that

the Sage has no wish to convert anyone to his own ideas, whatever

they may be, and no desire to add a single person to his following.

The second cause is certainly a strange one, but nevertheless

exists. Since the evening of that peculiar dream, I feel a great

awe whenever I enter his presence. The questions which would

otherwise have come chatteringly from my lips are hushed,

because it seems almost sacrilege to regard him as a person with

whom one can talk and argue on an equal plane, so far as

common humanity is concerned.

The third cause of my failure is simple enough. Almost always

there are several other persons present in the hall, and I feel

disinclined to bring out my private thoughts in their presence.

After all, I am a stranger to them and a foreigner in this district.

That I voice a different language to some of them is a fact of

little import, but that I possess a cynical, sceptical outlook

unstirred by religious emotion is a fact of much import when I

attempt to give utterance to that outlook. I have no desire to

hurt their pious susceptibilities, but I have also no desire to discuss

matters from an angle which makes little appeal to me. So, to

some extent, this thing makes me tongue-tied.

 

It is not easy to find a smooth way across all three barriers; several

times I am on the point of putting a question to the Maharshi, but

one of the three factors intervenes to cause my failure.

My proposed weekend quickly passes and I extend it to a

week. The first conversation which I have had with the Maharshi

worthy of the name is likewise the last. Beyond one or two quite

perfunctory and conventional scraps of talk, I find myself unable

to get to grips with the man.

 

The week passes and I extend it to a fortnight. Each day I

sense the beautiful peace of the Sage’s mental atmosphere, the

serenity which pervades the very air around him.

 

 

 

The last day of my visit arrives and yet I am no closer to him.

My stay has been a tantalising mixture of sublime moods and

disappointing failures to effect any worthwhile personal contact

with the Maharshi. I look around the hall and feel a slight

despondency. Most of these men speak a different language, both

outwardly and inwardly; how can I hope to come closer to them?

I look at the Sage himself. He sits there on Olympian heights

and watches the panorama of life as one apart. There is a

mysterious property in this man which differentiates him from

all others I have met. I feel, somehow, that he does not belong to

us, the human race, so much as he belongs to Nature, to the

solitary peak which rises abruptly behind the hermitage, to the

rough tract of jungle which stretches away into distant forests,

and to the impenetrable sky which fills all space.

Something of the stony, motionless quality of lonely

Arunachala seems to have entered into the Maharshi.

 

I have learnt that he has lived on the hill for about twenty years and

refuses to leave it, even for a single short journey. Such a close

association must inevitably have its effects on a man’s character.

I know that he loves this hill, for someone has translated a few

lines of a charming but pathetic poem which the Sage has written

to express this love. Just as this isolated hill rises out of the jungle’s

edge and rears its squat head to the sky, so does this strange man

raise his own head in solitary grandeur, nay, in uniqueness, out

of the jungle of common humanity. Just as Arunachala, Hill of

the Sacred Beacon, stands aloof, apart from the irregular chain

of hills which girdles the entire landscape, so does the Maharshi

remain mysteriously aloof even when surrounded by his own

devotees, men who have loved him and lived near him for years.

 

The impersonal, impenetrable quality of all Nature — so

peculiarly exemplified in this sacred mountain — has somehow

entered into him. It has segregated him from his weak fellows,

perhaps forever. Sometimes I catch myself wishing that he would

be a little more human, a little more susceptible to what seems

 

so normal to us, but so like feeble failings when exhibited in his

impersonal presence. And yet, if he has really attained to some

sublime realisation beyond the common, how can one expect

him to do so without leaving his laggard race behind forever?

 

Why is it that under his strange glance I invariably experience a

peculiar expectancy, as though some stupendous revelation will

soon be made to me?

Yet beyond the moods of palpable serenity and the dream

which stars itself in the sky of memory, no verbal or other

revelation has been communicated to me. I feel somewhat

desperate at the pressure of time. Almost a fortnight gone and

only a single talk that means anything! Even the abruptness in

the Sage’s voice has helped, metaphorically, to keep me off. This

unwanted reception is also unexpected, for I have not forgotten

the glowing inducements to come here with which the yellow-

robed holy man plied me. The tantalising thing is that I want

the Sage, above all other men, to loosen his tongue for me,

because a single thought has somehow taken possession of my

mind. I do not obtain it by any process of ratiocination; it comes

unbidden, entirely of its own accord.

“This man has freed himself from all problems, and no woe

can touch him.”

Such is the purport of this dominating thought.

..................